Saturday December 16th 5:00-9:00 pm

1508 11th Ave Seattle WA

Join me and my fellow creatives for an evening of locally crafted gifts, peculiarities and refreshments. Vermillion Gallery graciously hosts COAL a unique pop-up sale for this one night event. I will be offering my unique creations at amazing prices. The perfect gifts for those who have it all!

February 12, 2017 – Oddmall returns to Lynnwood,WA
Our very first show in the Seattle area took place in Lynnwood on September 22, 2013. On February 12, Oddmall returns to Lynnwood at the Embassy Suites Hotel. Over 90 booths featuring the finest Artists, Crafters, Authors, Purveyors of unusual items and gifts. This year, give something Strange for Valentine’s Day.

The show takes place on Sunday, February 12 from 10am-6pm.

Admission and Parking are FREE!

The Embassy Suites is conveniently located just off I-5 exit 181A.

20610 44th Ave West
Lynnwood,Washington
98036
425-775-2500

We invite you to RSVP on our official event page, and please invite your friends!

Know Your Ropes is a self guided walking tour delineated by a continuous “rope” graphic painted on the sidewalk. This path creatively winds its way through a neighborhood introducing participants to unique often overlooked areas of their community. Along the twists and turns of this “rope” there are a series of mariner knots depicted in the classic “Book of Knots” style. Each of these mariner knots serve as an interactive node, where a participant can access additional information relative to the theme of the route. The objective is to introduce residents to new areas of their community effectively “tying it together”, additionally it offers insight into the unique “gems” each neighborhood has to offer.

My team-mates on this Project were Sean Alexander, Rebeca Solverson, and Anneka Olsen. We were able to secure a “Walkability” grant offered by the health department which partially funded the Know Your Ropes project. My initial plan was to cut all the stencils cut out of eight by four sheets of plywood. Preliminary calculations indicated that a one mile circuit of stenciled rope was going to require spraying an eight foot stencil six hundred sixty times. The challenges of executing a project of this scale suddenly hit me and this particular revelation added a dark and bitter element to the entire project.

One evening I was lamenting my situation over a couple of beers. The thought of being responsible spraying 660 stencils was weighing heavily on my heart. It was at this moment that my drinking companion Dylan Betz floated the concept of a circular stencil. A circular stencil!?! This was the breakthrough I needed. Suddenly building a mechanical stenciling machine was much more attractive than the sum of the entire project. So I set to work engineering the Dylan Betz Unlimited – Rope Machine-.

The final project is so much larger than myself. I couldn’t make this happen without the assistance and expertise Of Sean, Anneka and Rebeca. There were meetings with the city about paint and permitting. Sean’s company AM Independent was responsible for the branding and website. Also the development and programing of the guided tours was something I never would have considered in the original concept. It rounds out the project in in such a way, giving it depth and breath, ant truly marrying it with the community.

The Know Your Ropes visual walking tour system was developed by myself and can be applied to any neighborhood or business district. This system uses temporary marking paint to create imagery and will naturally fade in a couple of months. If you have interest in hosting a visual walking tour in your area please contact Oliver Doriss

Components necessary to execute the Know Your Ropes sidewalk mural.

Floppy wheel technology

Tracing the stencils

Teaser knots

1 spray can gets 60 ft of rope

1st stencil & rope print test

Testing grounds

Neutrally balanced spray arm

Preliminary route calculations

Cutting stencils in the sun

Routing out stencils

The fully assembled Dylan Betz Unlimited Rope Machine

The installation of the entire mural took two and one half days, consumed 96 cans of paint and is 1.5 miles in length.

Hand operated balanced spray arm

Caution wet paint

Mariner Knot Stencils

GPS Navigation System

Alpine Butterfly

End knots for crosswalks

Figure Eight Knot

Tacoma Swerve

A little Flair in front of the Police Precinct

The scale of this project massive

Donughts!

The launch party was a tremendous success. Michael Sullivan lead our first hosted walk.

For more information about Know Your Ropes and future scheduled walking tours please visit the official Know Your Ropes website.

The Dylan Betz Unlimited – Rope Machine with Floppy Wheel Technology

Ready to Walk

Big Crowd for Michael Sullivan

Community Walk Series

The Know Your Ropes visual walking tour system was developed by myself and can be applied to any neighborhood or business district. This system uses temporary marking paint to create imagery and will naturally fade in a couple of months. If you have interest in hosting a visual walking tour in your area please contact Oliver Doriss

I am pleased to announce my participation in the NW Art Now exhibition hosted by the Tacoma Art Museum. It is an honor to be showing alongside so many of my good friends and peers. The piece I am presenting for this display is titled Alpine Panel – Study, it is a more intimate version of an earlier piece Alpine Panel. The show runs from May 14th to September 4th 2016

NW ART NOW @ TAM: social reflections within contemporary art

Tacoma Art Museum (TAM) debuts new and recent works by 24 regional artists in NW Art Now @ TAM, opening May 14. This exhibition highlights the current moment in Northwest visual arts with works that illuminate and respond to the social and environmental forces shaping our regional identity. Through their work, artists reveal tensions, provoke, delight, and inspire us to understand the challenging and urgent concerns of today. See how those themes appear in contemporary art through this special exhibition, on view through September 4, 2016.

“For the past 40 years, TAM has conducted regular surveys of contemporary art in the Northwest. We are proud that TAM takes on this important role to survey the art of our time and of our region,” said Stephanie Stebich, Executive Director at TAM.

Although the frequency and titles of TAM’s regional survey exhibitions has varied, the focus has remained constant – showcasing the achievements and advances made by artists working in the Northwest. Artists, curators, collectors, arts instructors, students, and art fans eagerly look forward to the surveys. You’d need to visit 24 art studios from Boise to Walla Walla and Seattle to Portland to see all of the works that NW Art Now @ TAM brings together in one stop in Tacoma.

How does a regional visual arts survey come together? Last winter, TAM issued an open call to artists, inviting them to submit digital images along with written statements about their work. Nearly 300 artists responded. This is a juried exhibition, meaning that the applications were reviewed and narrowed based on how the artworks and practices reflected the themes and goals of the exhibition. The co-curators then visited the studios or conference called each of the semi-finalists. The resulting show includes 24 artists and 47 works in a wide range of media, including painting, sculpture, craft-based work, as well as conceptual, performance, installation, and digital projects. Eleven of the original works will be on view for the very first time.

“It is fascinating to see how artists reach beyond the region and bring deep knowledge of contemporary art from around the world into their practices. They are raising the bar in really important ways,” observed Rock Hushka, Chief Curator and Curator of Contemporary and Northwest Art at Tacoma Art Museum. “These artists are changing our expectations about the role of art in shaping Northwest identity.”

The exhibition is co-curated by Hushka and Juan Roselione-Valadez, Director of the Rubell Family Collection (RFC), Contemporary Arts Foundation, in Miami, Florida. One of the world’s largest privately owned contemporary art collections, the RFC actively acquires and champions emerging artists working at the forefront of contemporary art. In addition to his work with the RFC, Roselione-Valadez has worked with some of the most prominent American and international artists, and is intimately familiar with the current trends of contemporary art, bringing broad and detailed background on current practices to this regional selection process. TAM frequently adds expertise and fresh perspectives from around the country, and has brought in art museum curators and scholars from New York City; Houston; Miami; Vancouver, BC; and other locations. Through this process the museum provides in-depth introductions to help specialists outside of our region become familiar with Northwest artists.

“I am extremely grateful for my time spent conversing with these compelling and generous artists in their studios and homes,” shared Roselione-Valadez. “Witnessing their process and listening to and seeing manifestations of their acute awareness of all that is working and all that is broken within the region, country, and world has left an indelible mark on me and the way I understand art, society, survival and our relationship to others and the environment.”

A few examples of the variety of interesting artworks in this exhibition include: Seattle artist Dylan Neuwirth’s 2014 Just Be Your Selfie is a large-scale neon installation that TAM will install under the canopy along Pacific Avenue, and which was much enjoyed during its previous installation in Seattle’s Pioneer Square. Section of the I-705, on a Wednesday, for Electric Piano is an audio and video projection project by Portland artist Lou Watson, derived from the patterns of traffic along I-705 as filmed from the museum’s rooftop. Seattle’s Joey Veltkamp is crafting his largest work to date for this exhibition, a quilt project titled Life is Beautiful. Sculptor Humaira Abid from Renton will present a talk at the museum on June 1 at noon, as part of TAM’s free Lunch and Learn series. Hushka noted the remarkable number of Tacoma artists in the show who are creating notable work, including: Oliver Doriss, Christopher Paul Jordan, Jeremy Mangan, Asia Tail, Jamie Marie Waelchli, and John Sutton of SuttonBeresCuller who was born in Tacoma and today lives in Seattle.

NW Art Now @ TAM is an opportunity to see art history in the making, with fresh creative works inspired by regional artists’ reactions to the considerations of identity, social justice, and environmental stewardship. For more information, call TAM at 253-272-4258 or visit www.TacomaArtMuseum.org.

Alpine Panel is a seven part installation comprised of cast glass elements that float just off the wall. The milky blue translucency allows light to flow through each piece illuminating an intimate composition of ferns and branches. These botanical vignettes are created through my signature casting process using locally sourced vegetation. Sterling silver accents and iridescent earth tones compliment the chilly glacial blues completing the work. The assembled composition ultimately forms a segmented alpine tree line with the ridge of Mt. Rainier in the distance evoking the same spatial dynamics of our grand North West landscape.

Incline

About 10 foot wide after install.

Fiinishing touches.

Glacial

Almost Touching

Evening install

Ridgeline

Ready to sooth & calm the patients.

Mountain Range

Ghost Town

Fern Detail

Proud

Alpine Panel is part of the Permanent Collection of Mary Bridge Hospital in Tacoma Washington
It is installed in the lobby on the fourth floor of the new Rainier Pavilion

I am influenced by the simplicity and natural elegance of Asian art. These sculptural works are my response to this aesthetic. The botanical decoration inside has been developed through my experiences and learning through my signature Cast Glass Vessel series. Although these works are not nearly as massive these stand approximately ten inches tall and feature a potent botanical composition encased within this thickness of glass. These intimate vignettes are composed from natural elements such as fern fronds, small branches and leaves. During the encasing process the organic matter is entirely vaporized by the heat of the glass leaving behind an ghost-like outline. The ephemeral imprint is brought to life with the addition of raw silver foil, metallic glass powders and reactive shards. Each of these sculptures is one of a kind and individually numbered.

Just like any city movers and the shakers operate behind the scenes. however projects of this magnitude being pursued without full public consideration smells of desperation and shortsightedness. I along with many of my fellow citizens were astonished to learn of the scope and risk involved in these two massive projects and equally astonished that we have not heard more news of these planned constructions before. In my curiosity to learn more about this I contacted Claudia Reidener who provided me with following information.

“The port of Tacoma is proposing two projects:
1) LNG (already underway with approval) Liquefied Natural Gas export facility proposed by Bellevue-base Australia owned Puget Sound Energy (PSE). The proposal is for a 180 foot tall gas tanks with liquefied gas (at MINUS 260 F). This facility is solely use to store large quantities, for export, to sell later and to fuel one company’s ships (Tote). International standards say they have to be three miles away from civilians. At a 2014 Plymouth WA LNG accident the fire marshal called a ¾ mile lethal zone around the facility and evacuated everyone within a two mile radius.Close call Fire & Evacuation at LNG FacilityLNG Facility Construction & RisksCity of Tacoma LNG Facility Timeline & Dates

North West Innovation Works LLC is a Chinese investment entity, proposing to build the largest methanol refinery in the world at the Port of Tacoma. As an LLC entity they minimize their risk leaving the Citizens of Tacoma with minimal recourse in the event of a catastrophic event.

2) NWIW (North West Innovation Works) wants to build the worlds largest methanol refinery facility. If built this refinery would consume 450 MW electricity from Tacoma Public Utilities, owned by the citizens of Tacoma. 450 MW can power 350,000 – 450,000 households according to the hydropower association. Tacoma has about 87,000 households. The refinery would also consume 14 to 21 million gallons of fresh water per DAY. All of Tacoma uses about 16 million gallons day. Also produced in the process 1.44 million gallons toxic waste water per day fed into our waste water treatment facility. Tagro is made from wastewater sludge. The refinery would also pump in 524 million cubic feet a DAY of fracked gas. The company piping in the gas is Williams Co, the same company that had the LNG accident just about a year ago (link above), and they have had gas pipeline accidents again and again and again. All these resources would be refined into highly volatile and toxic methanol, to be shipped via diesel powers massive chemical tankers to china to be turned into plastics. They are proposing to store 300,000 metric tanks on site, in above ground tanks. NWIW never built anything, anywhere. AS a corporate structure they tend to re-incorporate frequently to avoid responsibility down the line. Their maximum liability insurance is 50 million, plus 25 million environmental damage.”City of Tacoma Proposed Methanol Facility Dates & InformationNo Water for Methanol Facebook Page

To date the only long-term benefit of these facilities that I am aware of is the creation of a meager 200 permanent jobs after construction, and somehow this will reduce greenhouse emissions by allowing china to burn less coal? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Clearly: Glass as Sculpture atOpening September 5 through November 15, 2015

Reception: September 10, 5:30-7 pm
Gallery Talk: September 10, 4 pm

In “Clearly: Glass as Sculpture”, the stage is set to explore a wide range of glass sculpture created by regional artists working in this medium. A few artists will be selected and recognized for their contributions by the director of the Fuller Craft Museum, Jonathan L. Fairbanks, who will also give a presentation on the history of glass. Informative demonstrations by participating artists on the various techniques used to create glass sculpture will be held in conjunction with the exhibition

The gallery talk will be held by Jonathan Fairbanks, director of Fuller Craft Museum. Fairbanks will be giving the Edmund L. Zachar Memorial Lecture.

This is a strong exhibition of contemporary glass, and I am thrilled to be showing alongside these artists. Additionally I am honored to accept the “Most Fitting to the Theme” award as presented by the Cape Cod Museum of Art. Thank you. -Oliver

In the chilly waters of the Thea Foss one may observe a unique phenomenon, an impossible view into the surface of the harbor. The crisp form of FLOW is the embodiment of negative space and speaks through reflection and diffraction. Its rigid form juxtaposed against fluid motions of the water. This piece works seamlessly within the aquatic environment cycling every 45 minutes it is synchronized with the rhythms of the natural world.

FLOW is visible from the promenade in front of the Museum of Glass just in the waters off Dock St. Marina. For me this piece is a proof of concept and I look forward to applying these dynamics in a permanent setting. FLOW is best viewed at an oblique angle.

I really enjoyed the process of creating of this dynamic piece. I have dedicated a significant amount time this year resolving the many complexities of both the fabrication of the acrylic form and the function of the mechanical aspects. FLOW challenged every one of my accumulated creative skills including electrical, acrylic fabrication as well as mathematics for the calculation of water levels, flow and displacement. The installation within the decidedly hostile waters Thea Foss Waterway added additional variables to this already complex project.

Because of the limited budget this project was designed around preexisting equipment and materials available in my community. I also familiarized myself with the laser plotter at FabLab in Tacoma to cut the acrylic components. Another hurtle was my lack of a testing pool and had to call in the help of my friends in the marina for assistance. Lastly I would like to thank the Tacoma Arts Commission for taking a chance on this project. Without the help of this organization I would never have embarked upon this fantastic voyage. -Oliver Doriss

FLOW is on display from September 6th to October 6th it cycles every 45 minutes and is illuminated for night time viewing.

This piece was realized through support, funding and donations from the following entities.
Special Thanks to:

FLOW is a structured formation of negative space within a body of water. This void will be created in the form of letters. The letters will spell out a word that is directly related to the location of installation.

This project will operate much like a boat. The main body of the boat will fabricated from clear Acrylic. It will float just at the surface of the water. Surface water will cascade over the leading edge of the vessel obscuring the outer wall. This “Vessel” will have a self-regulating bilge pump to maintain its level of buoyancy. The finished piece will be displayed summer of 2013 in the Thea Foss Waterway. The final text size and shape will be determined by location and engineering constraints.